Congratulations on your nomination to be the 78th Treasury Secretary of the United States. Few of your predecessors took office at a moment of such risk or such opportunity. I suspect that, far more than is true for most Secretaries, your most significant acts will be in the international arena. This reflects in part the very limited scope the current political context provides for significant financial reform or tax legislation, and the fact that much of the financial response to COVID-19 has already been put in place by the Federal Reserve.

Even more it reflects the profound deterioration in US international economic relations and international economic cooperation in recent years and the very substantial domestic and foreign risks on the horizon. No Treasury Secretary since World War II has faced so diverse and consequential a set of international challenges ranging from maintaining financial stability to reconceptualizing macroeconomic policy and from meeting Chinese challenges to restoring the domestic underpinnings for global economic cooperation. As Tony Blair has said of progressives, “the problem is that the radical are not sensible and the sensible are not radical.” Here are some thoughts on the tasks ahead.